You’ve asked the question
You asked ChatGPT about your industry and your competitors showed up instead of you. Your sales team mentioned that prospects are saying “I asked AI” during discovery calls, and your name wasn’t part of the conversation. Leadership wants to know where you stand with AI visibility, and marketing doesn’t have data to back up an answer.
Or maybe you’ve invested heavily in SEO and it’s working for traditional search, but you’re realizing AI platforms pull from different signals. Rankings don’t automatically translate to citations. The two systems overlap, but they’re not the same.
The problem isn’t urgency. The problem is you’re making decisions without information. You don’t know whether AI visibility matters for your specific market, which platforms your buyers actually use, or what it would take to show up. This audit gives you a clear picture so you can decide whether AI visibility is a 2026 priority or something to revisit later.
What we examine
We test across the major AI platforms, focusing on the ones your buyers are most likely using. Four dimensions of visibility.
Platform coverage
Each AI platform has its own biases. ChatGPT leans on certain source types. Perplexity cites aggressively and shows its work. Google AI Overviews behave completely differently depending on whether the query is informational or commercial. A brand that dominates one platform can be invisible on another. We test six: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews.
Prompt methodology
The way a buyer phrases a question changes which companies show up. “Best cybersecurity firm for healthcare” and “Who should I hire to handle HIPAA compliance” pull different responses from the same platform. We build prompts across 8-10 customer intent categories to map how your actual buyers ask questions, from early research through final validation.
Source and citation analysis
AI platforms pull from sources to build their answers, and those sources aren’t always what you’d expect. In a recent audit, community forums showed up more frequently than any corporate website. In another, a competitor’s blog was being treated as a neutral authority. Once you see what AI actually trusts in your category, your content and PR priorities look different.
Competitive intelligence
Your competitors might be winning AI visibility for reasons that have nothing to do with their product. We map who gets mentioned, how often, in what context, and which sources are driving those mentions. More useful: we identify where nobody has shown up yet. Those gaps are usually easier to win.
See how this fits into our full process
What you get
You own everything we produce. Take it to any team, any agency, or execute it yourself. Every recommendation is written in plain language so your team can act on it without needing us in the room. Delivered as a shareable report, a spreadsheet prompt library, and a live findings walkthrough.
Complete prompt library
Every prompt we developed and tested, organized by customer journey stage. This isn’t just a deliverable you file away. You can retest these prompts anytime to track how your visibility changes over time. It’s a diagnostic tool you can keep running long after the audit is done.
Platform-by-platform results
How each AI system responds to queries about your category, your company, and your competitors. Where you appear, where you don’t, and what sources are being cited when you’re absent.
Source citation rankings
Which domains AI trusts most in your category, ranked by citation frequency across platforms. You’ll see how those sources differ from platform to platform. The patterns are almost always surprising and almost always actionable.
Competitive landscape map
How competitors appear across platforms, their mention frequency, the sources driving their visibility, and where they’re strong versus vulnerable. This often reveals opportunities that aren’t visible from traditional competitive analysis.
Opportunity hit list
Every identified opportunity scored by potential impact and feasibility (1-10 scale). Impact measures how much it could change your visibility. Feasibility measures how hard it is to execute with normal resources. You’ll know what’s worth doing first versus what can wait.
Prioritized strategic recommendations
Organized into immediate actions, short-term initiatives, and long-term plays. Each recommendation includes the reasoning behind it and enough context that any team could execute it, whether that’s your internal team, us, or another agency entirely.
Findings walkthrough
A live presentation where we walk through every finding, explain the reasoning, and answer questions. You’ll leave knowing what the data means and what to do about it.
How you’ll think differently
The audit gives you more than data. You’ll walk away understanding things about how AI visibility actually works that most marketing teams, and most agencies, are still figuring out.
How different platforms actually work
Google AI Overviews operate in two distinct modes. Informational queries (“what is penetration testing”) pull from editorial sources, blogs, and educational content. Purchase-intent queries (“best penetration testing company for financial services”) transform into something closer to a shopping experience with filters and brand cards. The content that wins in one mode doesn’t necessarily win in the other. Most agencies treat AI Overviews as a single thing and optimize generically. After this audit, you’ll know the difference and why it matters for your specific queries.
What sources AI systems actually trust
AI platforms weigh authority differently than Google does. An industry publication might dominate traditional search rankings but barely appear in AI citations. Reddit threads can carry more citation weight than corporate websites because AI treats authentic community discussion as a trust signal. Understanding which sources matter in your specific category changes how you think about content, PR, directory presence, and community engagement, whether or not you ever do formal AI optimization work.
Where the open space is
Every category has areas where competition for AI visibility is thin. Maybe nobody’s creating content for a specific use case your buyers care about. Maybe a comparison query that gets asked frequently has no clear winner in AI responses yet. The audit maps these gaps so you can make a strategic decision about whether they’re worth pursuing, rather than guessing or fighting for the most obvious queries where established players already dominate.
Is this the right move?
Honest guidance about whether this audit fits your situation.
The AI visibility audit is the right move
You want to know where you stand across AI platforms before investing in optimization. You need data, not opinions. You’re willing to hear that AI visibility might not matter for your market yet. Clear baseline, honest assessment, recommendations you own.
Think it’s a search problem
Traffic stalled or rankings dropped, but you’re not sure AI is specifically the issue. An SEO audit examines technical health, content gaps, and backlink profile for traditional search. Different diagnostic, different findings.
Need the full marketing picture
Not sure which channel is underperforming, or whether the problem is strategy rather than any single channel. A marketing audit evaluates how everything works together.
Not sure yet
Want to understand what AI visibility actually involves before committing to a diagnostic. Our AI visibility services page explains the space, the approach, and when this work makes sense.
Learn about AI visibility services
How it works
Five phases. Same sequence every time. The scope adjusts based on what you need, but the order never changes.
01 Discover
Kickoff conversation to understand your business, competitive landscape, and buyer behavior. We’re asking questions that shape everything downstream: Which queries actually matter for how your buyers research? Which platforms are they likely using? Who do they consider when evaluating options? This isn’t a questionnaire. It’s a strategic conversation that determines what we test and why.
02 Strategize
We build your prompt library using keyword research tools, competitive intelligence, customer journey mapping, and Google Trends data. Every prompt is designed to test a specific dimension of visibility: Are you showing up at all? In what context? Who’s showing up instead? What sources are driving those responses? A weak prompt library produces surface-level findings. The quality of the questions determines the quality of the answers, so we spend real time here.
03 Execute
Automated tracking across platforms captures response patterns over multiple days. AI responses aren’t static. The same prompt can produce different results on different days, cite different sources, mention different companies. Multi-day testing catches patterns that a single snapshot would miss. Our team also manually reviews responses because tools can’t read nuance. Tone, sentiment, subtle positioning differences between how Platform A describes a competitor versus Platform B. That’s where human judgment matters most.
04 Launch
Analysis and synthesis. Source citation mapping across hundreds of domains. Competitive landscape assembly. Opportunity scoring by impact and feasibility. Every finding gets contextualized. “You’re not showing up for this query” becomes “you’re not showing up because these three sources dominate, and here’s what would change that.” This is where senior strategists spend the most time, and it’s where raw data becomes a prioritized strategic roadmap.
05 Optimize
Findings presentation and recommendation delivery. Every finding explained with reasoning. Immediate actions, short-term initiatives, and long-term plays, each with enough context for any team to execute. Questions answered live. By the end, you’ll know what to do, why each recommendation matters, and how the pieces connect.
See complete marketing process with timelines
Frequently asked questions
Is AI visibility real, or is everyone just selling hype?
It’s real for some markets and premature for others. The audit exists to tell you which situation you’re in, not to presuppose the answer. If your buyers aren’t using AI tools for research in meaningful numbers, we’ll tell you to wait and revisit later rather than invest now.
Will AI visibility work hurt my regular SEO?
No. AI visibility and traditional SEO share most of the same foundations: quality content, authoritative sources, clear site structure. The audit will show you where the signals overlap and where they diverge. In most cases, improving AI visibility strengthens your SEO at the same time.
What if we’re not ready for AI visibility work?
Then we’ll tell you that, and we’ll tell you specifically what needs to happen first. The audit might conclude that your best investment is branding clarity, website improvements, or SEO fundamentals before touching AI visibility. We’d rather give you an honest assessment than sell a service you’ll outgrow in three months.
Is this just a sales pitch for your AI visibility services?
The audit might conclude you don’t need any AI visibility work. Or that you need work we don’t offer. Or that you can handle the recommendations internally. You get findings you own and can take anywhere. Whether you hire us to act on the findings, hire another agency, or execute in-house, the baseline doesn’t depend on who executes next. We’d rather give you an honest diagnostic and earn trust than oversell a service that doesn’t fit.
How is this different from running queries in ChatGPT myself?
Running a few queries gives you anecdotal impressions. You might test five or ten prompts in one sitting and draw conclusions from a tiny sample. The audit tests across six platforms over multiple days, maps citation sources across hundreds of domains, and layers competitive intelligence on top of raw visibility data. But the real difference is the analysis. A senior strategist spends hours connecting patterns: why certain sources keep appearing, what’s driving competitor visibility, which opportunities are actually worth pursuing given your competitive dynamics. The tools generate data. The thinking turns it into a strategy you can act on.
Can you guarantee we’ll show up more in AI results after this?
No. AI platforms change how they generate responses, and no one can guarantee specific outcomes. What we can guarantee is better inputs: you’ll know exactly which sources matter, which content gaps exist, and which opportunities have the highest likelihood of impact. You’ll also have a measurable baseline you can retest anytime, so you’ll know whether future efforts are actually working.
What happens after the audit?
That depends on what we find. Some clients take the recommendations and execute internally. Others bring us on for specific pieces or start a full AI visibility engagement. And some decide to wait because the data showed their market isn’t there yet. There’s no predetermined next step. The audit gives you the information to decide.
Have a question not listed here? We’re happy to help.
Get the complete picture
Find out where you stand across AI platforms, which competitors own the queries that matter, and what it would take to show up. If the answer is “nothing right now,” we’ll tell you that.
Investment: $700 – $2,000 depending on competitors mapped, buyer journeys modeled, and category complexity. One-time fee, no recurring commitment. Everything delivered and owned by you. Approximately 2-3 weeks from kickoff to findings.
